


fermata

by orphan_account



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:47:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24153793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A hand catches his, after—after there has been a distance between the place where he fell, and this one, now. It has not been a time, or at least not a quantifiable one, because time does not move the same here as it does in other places. But he has fallen through much of the Void and he remembers all of it, stretching out into infinity until it inexplicably stopped. Here.[When Delilah casts Corvo into stone, his soul becomes untethered from his body and ends up in the Void.]
Relationships: Corvo Attano & The Outsider, Corvo Attano/Jessamine Kaldwin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 60





	fermata

The witch pulls Corvo’s blade out of her abdomen as though its pain is no more than a pinprick. She smiles, slow and easy. She does not have the same laughter lines around her mouth that Jessamine did; the movement doesn’t tug at her cheeks, instead leaves them smooth and ice-pale, and her eyes are shadowed and cloudy-dark beneath her sharp browbones.

“Your sword can’t still my heart,” she says, and there is almost amusement in her voice.

Flaring smoke envelops her and the blood soaking her suit ceases spreading, stops dripping from the gash. It vanishes as though it was never there.

The vines wrapped around Corvo’s body tighten until he thinks his ribs might break, and he would cry out if any noise could escape him with the all-encompassing agony that is unfurling in his head and spine. He tries to gasp for breath, fruitlessly, and he can only watch through the grey-purple spots dancing in his vision as Delilah reaches towards him. She is going to grasp his hand, he thinks, only her palm hovers above his – above the bandages, where—

She _pulls,_ and he can’t scream but noise fills the inside of his skull, boundless, echoing, beating and tearing at every fiber of his being. Everywhere he felt the Mark within him, golden tendrils through his hands and veins and heart, everything is being ripped away.

Then it is over and the vines release him. He staggers backward, boneless and _weak_ in a way he has not been in the past fifteen years. Emily catches him by the shoulder and helps him stand upright.

For a brief moment, they are back-to-back. They can do this, he thinks; they can fight their way out.

And then Delilah reaches for him again.

“I will cast you in cold marble,” she says, a hum behind her words, and he lunges for her throat but he knows it’s already too late as he feels stone anchor him to the floor and spread upward lightning-quick. The last thing he hears is Emily’s cry of horror before his mind, too, goes still and silent as death.

He sees, first, the darkness that stretches thin and rough like a vast canvas, tar-black and empty but for the pale silhouette of a being at its center.

A woman; an empress. Her heart has been wrenched from the bones that kept it and left bound in another dimension, but her soul is ever lost in this one, wandering and wandering and seeing everything. She does not show her weariness. She holds her head high and walks the Void like it is the grandest of throne rooms.

Corvo’s heart is pounding heavily in his throat.

She looks the same as she did on the day she died. Her hair shines like the water on Dunwall’s most radiant moonlit nights; her eyes are the sky at its softest, a gentle gray that seems so much lovelier on her than the world could possibly wear it. She smiles and Corvo thinks that the earth could crumple under its brilliance, and oh, how the stars would long to fall to the ground and beg for her favor. He cannot call her beautiful. She is ethereal, and bewitching, but to say she is beautiful – such a simple thing – fails to recognizes the constellations written on her bones and the thunderstorms blooming within her veins.

“Jessamine,” he whispers, near breathless, and his voice dulls the word. There should be a chorus of whale-song held by those syllables, bursting with life.

He is far away from her. A mile across this abyss, where nothing seems to move but everything does, and he is much too far away for her to hear him. She has turned to look at him, but it is the way one looks at the empty air. He turns his eyes toward himself and finds that he is not there at all.

He is not there and there is nothing beneath him, so he falls.

And falls, and falls, and falls. It is endless and his voice falls quiet into nothingness. He does not know if he exists, or if he wants to.

A hand catches his, after—after there has been a distance between the place where he fell, and this one, now. It has not been a time, or at least not a quantifiable one, because time does not move the same here as it does in other places. But he has fallen through much of the Void and he remembers all of it, stretching out into infinity until it inexplicably stopped. Here.

The hand that holds him is slender and bony and solid, and it feels like it is cutting into Corvo as he is hauled into solidity himself, made real, feet at last placed on unmoving ground.

He falls to his knees, and there is neither sound nor pain when he hits the surface of the rock-like substance beneath him. It is slick, like whale-oil, and it flexes in a way that rock does not, _cannot,_ dipping a few inches beneath his fingers before pushing him away. He slips back. He chokes out a noise like a sob, because he knows he is going to fall again, and he does not think that the abyss will release him as it did before. He will not find Jessamine again, he will not find anyone at all, and never, ever will he find himself.

Then the hand grabs him, more tightly this time. A careful touch slides across his back, an arm wrapping around his torso with surprising strength, and a hold that is just barely too tense to be truly gentle. The barest brush of fingertips against his jaw turns his face upward, to meet eyes that are not eyes at all.

“I am of the Void, but it does not all belong to me, Corvo,” the Outsider whispers. “Do not go where I cannot come to you.”

Corvo nods, numbly. He’s trembling.

He has never spent so much time in the Void before.

The whales swim by often, but they do not sing. They block out the light if they pass in front of it, plunging everything into shadow for terrifying, long moments; the Void truly is the purest darkness, then. But the light returns quickly enough. It always does. Its sharp contrast to the darkness burns Corvo’s eyes, and yet he struggles to look away. There is not much else to look at here.

“Can we go closer?” he asks. He breathes the words, begs them. This island of rock is very cold, and very lonely when the Outsider is gone, but he thinks it might be alright if he were a little bit nearer to the light. He sees shapes moving over there sometimes, over on a rock platform so close to the brightness that it’s nearly fully illuminated, and he knows one of the shapes is the Outsider, because it disintegrates and reappears elsewhere, often. He does not know the others whom the Outsider interacts with. One of them seems familiar, with a natural grace to her stance and the controlled movements of a fighter, and the other figure is familiar too, but – not as much, and it makes him instinctively uneasy. It frightens him.

He tries to push the feeling away, and asks his question again when there’s no response. “Can we go closer to the light?”

His companion waves him off. Nothing shows on the Outsider’s face, not irritation nor concern nor boredom, yet Corvo has the sense that the god is feeling all three. “The boundaries between the Void and the living world are too thin there. What remains of your soul, where the rest of you is made to a statue, is kept safe only by this place that Delilah cannot yet reach. If you left it you would fade completely, and I cannot allow that.”

Corvo feels a flicker of warmth, although it dies quickly, whisked away by the winds that howl around them.

“I thought you didn’t play favorites,” he says.

The Outsider gasps an odd sort of laugh at that. The sound wracks through his chest like the cough of plague. He sounds terribly, disturbingly human. “I have always played favorites, Corvo, and I have always been a liar.”

“Were you lying when—”

“No.”

The Outsider turns away to stare at the light, almost hunching in on himself as he does so, and Corvo shivers as shards of darkness fold around the god like a shield.

“No,” the Outsider says. “I have sworn it to you, Corvo. I am watching over your daughter.”

He pauses a moment, and adds, “I am watching over her as well as I am able to. She is more stubborn than you ever were—even at the height of the plague, when the streets ran red with infected blood and you lost your tread over and over again, only to get back up every time. Always refusing my help. Emily appreciates my advice even less than you did, and seems displeased with the abilities my Mark has given her. I cannot do more for her. I have tried all that I can—is that enough to earn your trust, Corvo? Or must I prove myself further?” His voice is uncomfortably even and fraught with tension.

Corvo stands. He is careful as he picks his way across the slippery surface, takes each step only when he has the utmost of surety. He is even more careful when he rests his palm on the Outsider’s shoulder; clasps only with the lightest of pressures, callused fingers curving over an angular collarbone. “You have my trust, and more. I am grateful for what you’ve done.”

The Outsider looks up at him, seeming almost startled by the sentiment.

“Yes,” he murmurs. “I suppose you are.”

The Outsider is able to manipulate the Void, to some extent. He can form structures from its space, and he does so, sometimes. Corvo does not sleep, but he does – approximate it, and the Outsider creates for him a bed, of sorts. Corvo does not know what the materials are, but they are soft to lay upon and he finds peace in this way, as much as he can be peaceful knowing what is going on in the real world. He lays there and drifts; drifts, and sometimes forgets.

A cloud of dreams and memories ensnare him, so tightly that the Void disperses from his sight like smoke.

The docks of Karnaca are vibrant and loud with the bustle of the city’s daily activities. A man is selling sizzling-hot blood sausages on a corner while another hangs up colorful posters and banners advertising the coming festival – a celebration held by the Duke, in honor of his son’s birthday. Word on the street is that the son is not particularly pleased by the prospect of brooking a meal with commoners, and Corvo laughs about it with his friends; he’s met Luca Abele in person, and the boy truly is the nastiest young aristocrat you could imagine. It serves him right to be brought down a peg or two.

“What’s this about you winning the Blade Verbena? A scrawny little thing like you?” one of the shopkeepers demands when Corvo ducks into her shop for a reprieve from the sun, but the woman’s affected disbelief turns quickly into a huge smile. “Good job on that, kid. Make us proud of you, out there with the Grand Guard, you hear?”

Corvo smiles back and nods. He feels sixteen and stupid and strong, like he’s ready to take on the world, and laced through it is _excitement_ – for all that the work before him is daunting, he’s ready.

For the moment, though, he has other things to do. He buys a couple of things his mother asked him to get and leaves the shop with his pockets weighed down, his heart lifted in joy, and his feet pounding on the cobblestone as he returns to run with his friends through the streets, rivers of whale-blood squishing between their toes. It’s a fine day, as it always is. The sun beats down like a physical thing; the waves roll against the docks almost playfully. Dockworkers cry orders to one another and fishermen haul up hagfish and a dozen other sea creatures that will be frying over bonfires, tonight, and eaten by the whole of Karnaca. The tangy-sweet scents of fresh fruits fill the air, crisp Tyvian pears and juicy Gristolan apples and sweet Serkonan plantains, and a vendor gives Corvo a chipped glass of fig brandy when he helps her lift boxes covered in silver dust from the mines – ore, he reckons, to be shipped off and purified in factories. The dust gets all over him, and one of his friends dunks him in the water to wash him off before leaping in after him, laughing as he lands atop Corvo and sinks them both beneath the surface.

Corvo gets water in his mouth and comes up spluttering. He looks around, grinning with good humor, and then his happiness disappears like it’s been surgically removed from his chest.

Everything is gone.

Corvo’s ears are ringing persistently, and he smacks his hands to the sides of his head uselessly, and swims toward one of the slopes where they put the whale carcasses. All that remains are bleached-white skeletons. He trips on a ridge in the ground, and almost throws up when he finds himself covered in rotting whale guts and skin.

“Lukas,” he says. “Albio?” He does not see anyone, not anywhere. His friends are gone. The shopkeeper is gone; absolutely _everyone_ is gone. The streets are bare, the entire city seems just as empty. The only thing remaining is the blood on the streets.

A strange, sickening thought lurches through him like a punch to the stomach. He takes a closer look at the whale guts and skin.

They’re _human_ remains. There’s a _child’s skull_ peeking out from one of the heaps.

“What the—” he swears, almost certain he’s going to throw up, now, and he stares around some more, feeling unaccountably dizzy. It’s all so quiet. This is wrong. This isn’t—

“This isn’t how it happened,” he says, and his voice is deeper than it was a moment ago. There are more scars on his body.

The Outsider is beside him, and his presence is relaxing after being so suddenly alone. “No, it’s not,” the god agrees. “Not how it happened _yet,_ at least.” He holds out a hand, palm upward, and meets Corvo’s gaze steadily. “You should not be here, Corvo. The possibilities of the future are not for you to see. They would drive you mad.”

“I didn’t mean to come – here,” Corvo protests, wherever _here_ is, but he takes the offered hand unhesitatingly and awakens in the familiar emptiness of the Void.

They two are not the only ones who visit the Void and never leave. It is not home to anyone; but other souls linger here, nonetheless.

Jessamine passes by the islands of the Void much like the whales do, but she does not swim, of course. She moves like the faerie queens in the bedtime stories he once told Emily; daintily, gracefully, with authority. She walks across the rocks and the emptiness with equal ease. She does not ever fall, and she does not ever notice Corvo’s presence, nor the Outsider’s either. Corvo finds it impossible to notice anything else, when she is there. She is as striking as she was when he saw her silhouetted against the very edge of the Void, just before he fell, and as she was so many years ago when they met back in Dunwall, with her father hovering behind her and fixing Corvo with an expression of intense disapproval.

She still sings to herself, often, just as she did then. Her voice is weak but lovely and carries far. Her tastes vary; Abbey hymns, lewd whaler ballads, Serkonan folk songs she asked Corvo to teach her. They are the same tunes she sang in life.

Corvo wonders if she really knows that she is dead. If she knows that, for all intents and purposes, so is he.

He aches.

“You grieve her still,” the Outsider says. There is an uncertain lilt to his voice, but it is not a question, not exactly. More – curious. Inviting Corvo to elaborate on something that the Outsider so clearly does not understand. “But you do not grieve yourself, or the life that Delilah has robbed you of. Why not?”

“Grieving doesn’t ever end absolutely, I don’t think,” Corvo says. He barks a laugh. “Or maybe I’ve just been doing it all wrong.”

He doesn’t answer the second question. He doesn’t really have an answer.

The Outsider gives him things to entertain him. Books, ones Corvo knows and ones that have been lost to the world for thousands of years, printed in the neat letters of Dunwall’s printing presses or in great sweeping strokes of handwritten words and painted over in liquid gold; mind puzzles, too, like Corvo’s seen around Sokolov’s workshop and never had the time to take any interest in; and often simple things meant only to bring a brief smile, such as a large river krust pearl, or a Pandyssian flower whose petals reflect like mirrors.

And yet, for all of the things meant to keep his attention, Corvo finds himself falling into disinterest for long periods, staring dully into the light that is practically a pinprick in the distance. He is entranced; he lifts his hand towards it, dreams to touch it, dreams to be touched by it and finally leave this oppressing near-complete darkness.

The Outsider grasps his wrist and stays his longing. “No, Corvo,” he says. “You must remain here, where you are safe.”

Corvo has no refutation against that, nor against the light brush of fingers on his skin that feel freezing, burning, _real._ He is sometimes not sure what else in the Void is real, except for its god.

He stays.

But the Outsider leaves, every now and then – for a given value of _now_ and _then,_ whenever those might be – and Corvo forgets and watches the light, and sometimes he can’t help but move towards it, finds himself standing at the edge of his prison. He is still mindful of the island’s unpredictable stability, even more so as he looks down into the blackness below that sucks away all the cold, and the ache, and everything. He thinks that he could just tilt forward and—

“ _Don’t,_ ” the Outsider snarls as he reappears, gripping Corvo’s arm so tightly it hurts and yanking him back away from the edge, shaking with all the boundless fury of a god whose warning has gone unheeded.

He collapses next to Corvo, chest heaving with unsteady breaths.

“You will be the end of me, you foolish human,” he snaps. “What if I let you fall? Is that what you want? What would you do, then? What would your _daughter do,_ when she frees you of your prison, only to find nothing but a lifeless corpse within?” He throws a fist against Corvo’s jaw, radiating anger, but the blow has little force behind it; he could obliterate Corvo in an instant with the true extent of his strength.

“I miss her,” Corvo says, which is not what the Outsider asked, but it is the only thing he can reply. He rubs at his jawbone.

“She is not the same girl as you once knew,” the Outsider says, words biting. “Would you still miss her, I wonder, if you saw what she has done to her enemies and to innocents alike?”

Corvo dreams again; in this one he sees—

Dunwall is as gloomy as he remembers it to be, twice over, and a thousand times cheerier than the Void he’s grown used to. He’s wandering the Distillery District. He knows it well, but it feels strangely unfamiliar to him anyway. It is not unpleasant. He walks about, looking at things as though for the first time; and he does know well enough to steer clear of Granny Rags’s apartment; she seemed to have vacated it at some point, and he last saw her in the sewers, but who knows what she’s been up to in these past years. There are not many people around. It’s disturbingly reminiscent of during the plague, but there’s a distinct lack of rats.

He grimaces, seeing one or two of the vermin scurrying around an alley. Well. _Mostly_ a lack of rats. But there has, in any case, been a cure for the plague available for a long time; it’s not a concern any longer. Or at least so Sokolov always said, which is not particularly comforting.

“Father?” says a voice behind Corvo, and he finds Emily standing there with a mischievous smile on her face.

“Father, Wyman’s snuck some of that Orban Rum from the kitchens when the cooks weren’t looking,” she confides. “Is it alright if we have a picnic – just by ourselves? No Royal Protector. I’ll be careful, I promise.”

It makes him laugh. Emily and Wyman remind him so much of himself and Jessamine, when they were younger. “Alright,” he says. “Since you’ll be careful.”

He turns back to the street before him, and he passes the place where that old scavenger lived – Griff, he thinks the man’s name was. It suddenly occurs to him to wonder why Emily is here in the Distillery District – and why is he here, as well? He doesn’t have the spare time to spend meandering around without a good reason. He turns to ask Emily, only to find her long gone. Some of the citizens give him curious looks, and one or two murmur, “Lord Protector,” as they pass by, but he is otherwise left quite alone.

He sets off to return to Dunwall Tower, not knowing what else to do. The hike will do him good, in any case. It’s nice to stretch his legs. He has the sense he’s been confined to a small area for a while, though he can’t imagine why – he’s rarely ill, so what reason would he have not to go about his daily activities?

He enters the Tower, and his head spins. A numbness spreads through him, vision going hazy, and then it stops suddenly and he is standing in the middle of the ballroom with a party in full bloom.

It is dusk now, as well. The sky is turning purple outside the windows, soon to be nighttime.

“Dance with me, Lord Protector?” Jessamine asks, linking her arm with his and drawing him out onto the dance floor.

Corvo gazes back at her, stunned. Tears prick at his eyes.

She frowns, concern wrinkling her features, and leans up to gently brush the tears away; her fingers trail over his temples and dip into his hair, pushing it back from his face. “What is wrong, my love? Are you feeling well? We can leave, if you wish. My presence here is unnecessary, truly—you need not worry. Emily is more than capable of handling the unveiling of Anton’s latest invention, as well as anything that might go wrong tonight—which it _will,_ ” she adds wryly. “Something always does, when it comes to his demonstrations. But Emily’s a wiser Empress than I ever was and she’ll deal with it; she does not need me to remind her of that.”

Corvo shakes his head minutely, dazed, unable to stop looking at Jessamine even for a moment. “Emily is…” Yes, that’s right, he knows. Emily is Empress. But… “I just saw her in the Distillery District.”

Jessamine frowns. “Distillery District? Corvo, she’s right over there.” She gestures across the room, where Emily is indeed present, locked in an animated conversation with Wyman and a few other nobles. Wyman looks rather starstruck, as they always do around Emily.

“Oh,” Corvo says. “I thought—never mind.”

“Can we dance now?” Jessamine asks, looking rather amused now, though the concern is still there.

As if he could say no. He lets her tug him into her arms just as the next song is beginning, and he ducks his head until their faces are perhaps closer than is appropriate, but she does not seem to mind. There are no whispers and rumors floating around the room, no wolf whistles from lords who’ve had too much to drink. Corvo feels too happy to speak. Jessamine smiles at him with a joy no less than his, and she is radiant, practically glowing with health. She looks years older than he remembers seeing her last and it suits her well.

He spins her around and dips her, and she laughs with unfettered delight. His heart, he thinks, may burst; it feels so full that he can hardly breathe.

“Come on,” she says at the end of the song, releasing him only to take his wrist and pull him in the direction of the doors to the balcony. “Just for a moment. It is so warm in here—I hope Anton and Piero soon finish that mechanism of theirs that they keep going on about, the one that cools the air.”

Corvo nods and follows, powerless against the magnetic pull around her.

It is indeed much cooler outside, and the stars are beginning to come out, twinkling and lovely overhead. Jessamine kisses him here, crowding him against the railing and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. The party is just a few meters away, filled with people chatting and glasses clinking and shoes tip-tapping on the floor, but the only thing Corvo can hear is his own breathing. They could be interrupted at any time, but all that matters to him in this moment is the softness of Jessamine’s skin and the press of her lips against his and the glittering of her eyes in the faint light. Everything about her is solid and warm and enchanting, as though she is a very force of nature, the universe concentrated into one human body, and somehow – somehow, she loves him. It is unbelievable.

They stay there on the balcony for far longer than they ought to. They do return to the inside, eventually, and Jessamine accepts Sokolov’s invitation to dance a waltz or two, but her eyes never leave Corvo’s, and he can do nothing but smile helplessly back at her.

He wakes with the light of the ballroom still imprinted on his retinas, flaring briefly against the endless dark. Jessamine is gone. He curls up on his side, trembling until his nerves ache, and he tries to pretend that he is not where he knows he is. Tears form on his lashes and stay there until they dry. His chest feels very, very hollow.

He asks after Emily every time he sees the Outsider, though it’s pointless; the Outsider has been wholly unforthcoming about Emily’s situation or anything of what’s going on in the world, aside from statements along the lines of “She is alive” and “Delilah still has the throne.”

Corvo persists anyway.

“Emily continues to make unexpected choices,” the Outsider responds this time, and doesn’t elaborate.

Corvo lays back, folding his arms over his head. “Oh?” he mutters, infusing the word with sarcasm and perhaps more than a little bitterness. “That’s good to know.”

The Outsider does not say anything else. Corvo sighs and sifts through a stack of books, settling on one of those cheap romance novels that have always been so popular in Dunwall. _The Young Prince of Tyvia_ ; he sees copies of it everywhere, but he’s never read more than a few pages himself. No time like the present to do so, he supposes.

A whale passes close overhead as he’s reading. He stretches a hand up, absently, and finds that he can nearly touch it; curious, he pushes himself up into a sitting position and reaches again, only to find that his fingers pass through the whale’s body like smoke. He jerks his hand away, unnerved. His grip on the book slackens and it tumbles into the abyss. He turns to the Outsider, uncertain what he means to ask but seeking answers nonetheless – and finds the god already looking back at him, face slack with surprise.

“It seems, Corvo,” the Outsider says, after some hesitation, “that despite my efforts, you are nonetheless fading away.”

Corvo closes his eyes. Dread crawls through his chest like icy fingers tugging at his flesh, winding cruelly through his ribs. “And what happens then – what happens if even the Void can no longer keep me? Where do I go?”

The Outsider looks, of a sudden, so terribly old and weary, as though all of his four thousand and more years have begun to weigh upon him at once. He comes to sit beside Corvo, physically _sit,_ not float just above the ground as he usually does; there are a few inches between them, not quite touching, and yet the shared presence is comforting nonetheless. The twist of his mouth could almost be a wry sort of smile, if the Outsider knew how to smile; and perhaps he did know once, when he was human, and he has now forgotten.

“I cannot tell you that,” he says, quietly. “Wherever it is that the dead go – it is a not a place that belongs to me, nor is it one that I can visit for myself.”

Corvo does not know how long he’s been in the Void. It’s hard to judge, when there are not events to record the days by, or the sun’s shine, or the moon’s rise. Nothing happens. It would be boring, if Corvo were not so tense all the time. He’s constantly afraid; not for himself, but for Emily and, a little bit, the Outsider as well. The strain of enduring Delilah’s hold shows clearly in the Outsider’s body language; for all that the god is, most of the time, as cryptic and aloof as he has always been, there are times when he allows anger to show through or even, once or twice, Corvo thinks he has seen tears like drops of liquid smoke around the edges of the Outsider’s black eyes.

But this is a new emotion from him: panic.

The Outsider’s movements are almost frenzied. He paces back and forth across the rock island, scuffing his shoes on uneven places and nearly tripping in his haste. Corvo catches him by the arm, one such time, only a moment before the Outsider would have fallen over the edge. He doesn’t know what would happen if the Outsider himself fell – probably nothing, but he doesn’t want to find out.

He keeps his hand on the Outsider’s arm, thereafter, and paces beside him. He switches his grip to the Outsider’s hand when they’ve gone in forty or fifty more circles.

A hundred more, and Outsider stops short.

“I cannot move,” he says. At Corvo’s raised eyebrow, he adds, “I don’t mean as humans do. I mean that I cannot move as _I_ should be able to. I cannot feel the corners of the world, or what Delilah is doing; she has leeched so much from my connection to the Void that I do not know what control I have over it any longer. I think— _Corvo,_ ” he says, desperately, almost choking on the word. “I don’t know what is happening. _I don’t know._ ”

“It’s alright,” Corvo says, wishing it sounded more reassuring. He doesn’t even believe it himself. Oh, Void. _Emily._ Is she even alive?

The Outsider grips Corvo’s hand tighter, and suddenly he is gripping only air. His fingers pass through Corvo’s, and the Outsider moves back a step, staring at his own hands with a distant expression.

Corvo grits his teeth, trying to push back his terror. Now is not the time. He feels fine, in any case; he doesn’t feel less… solid, just, if anything, very tired. It reminds him of when the Outsider pulled him back from the edge. He could just… just… let go, and it would be so much easier. The fear would slip away like water, and he would—

He would be gone, and for Emily’s sake he mustn’t let that happen.

It’s hard to focus on the present moment. His head is swimming, and he thinks he might throw up if there were any food in his stomach. The silence is going to kill him.

“Talk to me,” he tells the Outsider. “Please. Talk to me about anything, just _talk to me._ ”

The Outsider puts a hand on his wrist, and this time it holds true. “Have I ever,” he says, voice steady and even almost soothing, despite the situation, “told you of Pandyssia? Of its real wonders, not merely what your explorers think they have seen. They have only ever scratched the surface. They could not begin to fathom some of the things they might find, at its heart, where so many humans have gone missing or mad. It is a fascinating place, Corvo.”

Corvo leans forward, pressing his brow into the Outsider’s shoulder, and breathes deep in the thin not-air of the Void.

“Alright,” he says. “Tell me of Pandyssia.”

The Void _quakes._

The Outsider jerks away from Corvo. “Go. You must go.”

Corvo stares at him. “What? Why? Isn’t it dangerous for me to leave this—" He’s cut off in the middle of his sentence when pain shoots up his spine, and he hisses through his teeth. It feels like someone has dug into his skin and wrapped their fingers around his spine. He is being pulled in the direction they will him, back toward the edge. He stumbles, tries to catch his footing.

“Corvo,” the Outsider breathes suddenly, “something’s changed. I can—"

He rises abruptly, returning to his usual state of ignoring gravity, and he waves a hand. Before Corvo knows it they are standing on that brightly-lit island that was so far in the distance, and it is _blinding._

And he is fading. Light is piercing through him in great beams that burn like hot irons.

“What is happening,” he tries to ask, but his mouth doesn’t move. He can’t move at all. It feels like his body is made of lead, and everything is growing blurry. Or not—blurry, but things are _changing._ The Outsider fades from his vision, all of the Void does, and colors he has forgotten begin to bleed in. The stiffness starts to leave his limbs; he drags open his eyes fully, feeling startlingly weary as though he has run miles upon miles, and fallen from a couple of rooftops besides.

“Father,” Emily says, cupping his cheek carefully. She sounds worried.

The throne room comes sharply into focus, and with it, the expression of desperate relief on her face. “Emily…?” He blinks, and blinks some more. Joy is rising in him, bright and beautiful, but there is confusion, too.

She looks so different. Her hair is the same, short and neat, and she wears the same suit she’s always favored, the one tailored for combat, the one she wore to the memorial; but her face is harder, colder, fiercer than it was, and written deeply with pain. The blade at her waist is dripping thick streams of blood to the floor, and the handle of her crossbow is worn with use. Most notable is the Mark that peeks out from under the bandages wrapped askew about her left hand. He knew it would be there, but it’s still a shock. And what else is new?

“What happened?” he rasps.

“Let’s sit down,” she says with a tremulous smile. “I’ll explain it all.”

It can wait. He closes the short distance between them and wraps his arms around her, resting his chin on the top of her head. He feels her begin to shake after a moment, soft sobs wracking her frame, and she buries her face in his neck.

“It’s alright, sweetheart,” he whispers. “I’m here.”

He can sleep that night in his own chambers, no floating rocks or infinite abyss in sight, and his hands do not pass through anything. He turns out the whale-oil-powered lights on the wall but leaves a lantern at his bedside, casting a soft glow around the room; he feels foolish, very briefly, at how glad he is for the light, but he has grown tired of the dark and he does not wish to return to it. He is exhausted, but he doesn’t sleep yet. He draws a bath instead. The hot water is wonderful; for all that his soul was in the Void, his body stayed in the throne room under an encasing of stone, and his muscles remember the experience unfortunately well.

He relaxes, and at last, closing his eyes brings him no fear or grief. He lays there for some time, and when he finally rises it’s only to pull on some sleep pants and stretch out on the bed with a book he started ages ago, marked halfway through with a strand of ribbon. He doesn’t remember the beginning, but it doesn’t bother him.

“You look happy,” the Outsider says, and Corvo looks up with an eyebrow raised. The Outsider is perched on Corvo’s desk, carefully avoiding knocking over any inkwells or the like. “Happy, and you are entirely corporeal. An improvement, I would say, over your previous state.”

Corvo laughs. It comes out rough through his unused vocal cords, and he clears his throat with a wince. “Yes. A significant improvement.”

The Outsider stands – well, floats. “Do try not to repeat this experience, Corvo. I would not care to lose another one of my Marked in such short order.” He pauses. “I would not – would not care to lose a friend.”

Warmth sparks under Corvo’s ribs, and he smiles. “Rest assured, I’ve no intention of dying any time soon.”

“I’m glad,” the Outsider says.

Corvo sets his book aside and hauls himself up, biting back a grimace as his joints pop and crackle. “I am grateful for what you did, you know. For protecting me, and keeping me sane, and watching over Emily. I can’t pretend to know what it felt like, Delilah taking your power from you, or whatever it was that she was doing – but I don’t imagine it was easy to deal with, and you took time to be kind to me despite it.”

“I was not _kind,_ ” the Outsider protests, sounding _indignant_. “I was—” he flounders. “I only—”

“You could just accept my thanks,” Corvo suggests, grinning.

He holds out a hand to shake, and is strangely unsurprised when the Outsider instead draws him in for an embrace. He hugs him back. Unlike Emily, the Outsider is of height with Corvo; but he feels much smaller, leaning against Corvo and tucking his face into Corvo’s shoulder. It’s only a few seconds before he pulls away.

“I think I will miss you,” he says.

“Why is that?” Corvo asks. “You can visit anytime.” He shakes his head, amused. “Although I think some caution is to be advised – I expect Emily would like to slap you, the next time she sees you. She is not so patient with you as I am.”

The Outsider shakes his head. “I do not think that there will be a next time. Whatever the future holds, I will not meet either of you again. Not as I am now, at least.”

Corvo’s humor fades as quickly as it came. “You are certain of this?” he asks.

“Yes.”

Corvo shakes his head; his throat is tight, and words come out tense. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

The Outsider huffs out something like a sigh. “Neither do I.”

He turns away, looking out the window at the faint black blobs of boats sailing on the Wrenhaven River, and the silence goes on unbroken for a while. Corvo joins him, resting his palms on the sill. The stars sparkling in the midnight sky are as beautiful as they were in his dreams of Jessamine. More so, because they are real this time. It is not Jessamine who stands beside him, and a part of his heart yearns for her still, but he is not displeased the Outsider’s presence instead, though his previous contentment is interrupted by a measure of sadness now.

“Take care of yourself, my friend,” he says. “Do that for me? One last favor.”

The Outsider clasps Corvo’s arm, and in a matter of moments his hand is already beginning to disperse into fragments of darkness. It is much slower than the Outsider usually transverses, but it is too soon for Corvo’s liking.

“I cannot make any promises, even for you, dear Corvo,” the Outsider says. “But I will try my best. Do the same for me.”

And then he is gone.

“There’s a lot of work to be done,” Corvo says, picking his way over Delilah’s vines. They nearly cover this particularly hallway; he wonders why. The whole area smells like dead things, and all the sorts of ingredients witches seem to so often use in their spells.

Emily pokes dubiously at some food left out on a table. “Yes, there certainly is.” She smiles wearily. “Are you ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” he says ruefully.

Dunwall, focal point of chaos that it is, will never quite lose its grip on him, even when the place is falling to pieces as it so often is. He can’t bring himself to mind, really, that it’s time for him to put it together again. Emily is here to help – to lead the charge, more like. The Outsider is gone, and it might be forever, but it might not be. And Corvo’s back hurts even worse than the time he threw it out bending over to pull on his boots, but at least he’s not still a statue.

The situation isn’t ideal. Life rarely is; they’ll make do, as always. And whatever comes, they’ve got each other’s backs.

**Author's Note:**

> because Corvo just being trapped as a statue has great angst potential, but I liked this better.


End file.
